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9/11 domestic complicity conspiracy theories

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The 9/11 domestic conspiracy theory is a Conspiracy theory which asserts that George W. Bush or American intelligence agencies knew, in advance, about the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks, and allowed it to happen or even helped cause it. It is not to be confused with less extreme theories that parts of the US government may have had some warning of the attacks but did not act due to error or incomplete information.

Theorists often go on to argue that Bush actually supported the attacks as they would provide an excuse to launch the War on Terrorism. (See also: Project for the New American Century). Immediately after the attacks, Donald Rumsfeld was seeking evidence to "pin it" on enemies which were already targets of the administration: Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Wesley Clark has revealed pressure on himself to participate in this effort.

Some advocates of this theory claim that, on the day of the terrorist attacks, Israeli workers were warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center and that key government officials were warned not to fly on aircraft heading through New York and Washington airspace. No evidence has ever been offered in support of these theories, although John Ashcroft was earlier in 2001 warned off commerical flight "for the rest of his term" by the FBI; Willie Brown, mayor of San Francisco, was warned the day before against flying; and several "top Pentagon officials" cancelled 9/11 travel plans the day before.

Advocates also claim that Bush has not allowed a proper investigation of the attacks.

The theory is also supported by the story of Delmart Vreeland, a career criminal on the run from fraud charges in Michigan who claims to have been a spy for the Office of Naval Intelligence. While in Canadian custody on August 11 and 12 2001, Mr. Vreeland claims he wrote a note which listed a number of targets such as the Sears Tower, World Trade Center the White House and The Pentagon. The note also said: "Let one happen. Stop the rest!!!" The notes which were in an evidence locker on the morning of September 11, can be seen at: http://www.guerrillanews.com/wildcard/thenotes

Like most conspiracy theories, this one is generally derided by authority as being unsubstantiated, and less credible claims are examined in depth as more credible ones go unexamined. This happens even on Misplaced Pages (see Talk:9/11_domestic_conspiracy_theory).

This theory is not unique - such struggles to write history are common. It parallels the more widespread belief that the US government had advance knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which propelled the US into World War II, and the more mainstream belief that the Nazis started the Reichstag fire.

Distrust of authority plays a role in the propagation of any such theory. However, there is reason to believe that the Bush administration was at best incompetent, as it did not follow its own protocols for dealing with hijacked planes, updated in June 2001. See the links below.

The evidence

Actual evidence of a 9/11 domestic conspiracy to commit or cover up major intelligence failures related to the attacks includes

Michael Meacher, a British MP, writes in The Guardian, that "US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".

"Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001)."

"Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002)."

"All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate. "

"Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence."

"Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism."

See also

External Links